The following is a guest post by Lan Xue, dean of Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy and Management in China. To be a Chinese academic at the moment is to appear privileged to the rest of the world. When I speak to counterparts at universities outside China, I hear of pressures to cut, squeeze, and do more with less. In contrast, Chinese higher-education’s recent history is one of growth, reflected in rising numbers of students, scientific output that has increased in both quality and quantity, and a greater number of overseas staff employed by our universities.
In the last few months the Chinese government has announced that we are on the verge of attaining a 30-year objective of spending 4 percent of GDP on education. Given expectations for continued GDP growth, this points to further increases in budgets for universities and other forms of postsecondary education. It would be idle for me, situated in Tsinghua University, an institution that has benefited greatly from government support, to deny that sense of being in the right place at the right time. It would, though, be equally false to claim that Chinese higher education faces no challenges. Our system, in keeping with our national development as a whole, remains that of an emerging, rather than a fully developed, market. While that 4 percent expenditure marks the attainment of a long-cherished objective, it is still less than the average spent by OECD members on education (5.9 percent). While GDP growth, stalled in many other countries, is projected to continue in China, it is unlikely to be at the headlong rates of the recent past. The most recent economic data for China seem to indicate a slowdown.
The extent to which our experience echoes that of other nations was made clear to me by participation in the Emerging Markets Symposium, based at Green Templeton College, Oxford, earlier this year. It brought together 40 to 50 authoritative and influential leaders from governments, the public and private sectors, and academe from around the world to discuss common themes and concerns in higher education. The outcome of the discussions was a comprehensive set of recommendations for the future of higher education in emerging-market nations. Not all are equally applicable to ever country. China’s sheer size and distinctive history will always make it stand out among other nations. But there is much in the recommendations covering such issues as governance, finance, quality, and access that has a distinct resonance. In particular China can identify with the arguments that “tertiary education is a condition of sustained economic growth” and that “human potential in emerging markets is vastly untapped.” Among the great challenges facing the university sector in China is meeting the ever-growing demand for quality education. While we can point to growth at both undergraduate and graduate level in recent years, much of that demand remains unsatisfied, particularly in quality terms.
One reason for this is the challenge to maintain quality in the face of rapid expansion. Another is the mismatch between regional demand and regional supply. In spite of the strong role government has played in our sector, the distribution of higher-education institutions is highly skewed in China. Universities are heavily concentrated in the main cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and in provincial capitals. This has a number of damaging effects. Not least of the roles of universities in emerging markets is as engines of local economic growth and suppliers of the skilled workforce – in both the public and private sectors – necessary to make that growth sustainable. It means that, lacking universities, many second – and third-tier cities also miss out on these benefits. Potential students from these regions are also at a disadvantage in the national entrance examination because of the lower quality of their primary and secondary schooling. As an institution, Tsinghua University has tried to counter this by admitting some students from low-achieving areas with somewhat lower examination scores, but this can only be done on a comparatively small scale. An additional problem is that those students who are able to go to major cities to study are unlikely to return because opportunities are scarce in their hometowns. All of this serves to widen already huge social and economic inequalities and, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, we are as a society still very concerned by social equity.
One of the strongest recommendations of the symposium was that “all students pay at least part of the cost of tertiary education by borrowing and/or earning.” That is already largely the case in China, but it should be balanced by the consideration that access to higher education should be “open to all qualified students without regard to family circumstances or financial capacity.” This is very hard to achieve unless we have the adequate student financing mechanisms also called for. China has been developing a national student loan system since the 1990s, but such mechanisms take time to fully develop to the extent needed. Another challenge is related to globalization. Many Chinese students now choose to study abroad, which is both a comment on the options available at home and reflection of the tastes of our newly enriched middle-class. To have a child educated in the United States or some other developed country is a potent status symbol that many can readily afford. So, Chinese universities find themselves in a globalized competition for both students and staff. This is not something we should shy away from. The last thing China or its universities need is a renewed bout of isolationism – we have not rejoined the world and its mainstream intellectual currents in order to retreat as soon as it presents us with challenges. However, this trend does add urgency for Chinese universities to improve their quality and governance. One very clear benefit from the global movement of academic staff has been the extent to which scientists returning from study or work abroad bring with them an international network of contacts and collaborators. This is reflected in the global range of co-authors now associated with their publications. This sort of “brain circulation” is only to be welcomed.
One issue, clearly indicated in the symposium report, is that of academic pay. Philip Altbach’s research has shown Chinese academic salaries trailing way behind those in developed countries. There are, of course, many ways in which academics can increase their inadequate pay by consulting or research for the private sector, but this unavoidably distracts their focus from academic duties. The government has attempted to address this. Programs have been designed to attract high quality staff, both Chinese and international, from abroad. This has had some effect, but is of limited benefit outside the higher-ranked institutions. A broader-reaching solution is needed. Similarly to persuade students to stay in China, we need to offer them more – better courses and also jobs that will allow them to use the skills they have learnt through study. Progress has been made in curriculum development, with professional associations enjoying a greater input into graduate qualifications such as the MBA and MPA, but there is also an important institutional dimension. Here again, the symposium document offers part of a possible solution when it calls for “diverse institutions that match supply and demand.”
While the Chinese system is not so heavily micro-managed as outsiders may imagine, there is a certainly a need to give universities greater autonomy in which to develop distinctive missions and through this offer students a greater range of possibilities than they enjoy at the moment.
These responses to globalization would be of greatest benefit to a “squeezed middle” of middle-ranking institutions. The highest-ranked institutions like Tsinghua are, as various international rankings show, well equipped to compete. There is much to be said for China having unquestionably world-class universities, and I certainly won’t deny that seeing my own university so well regarded globally is gratifying. But this should not be our main priority. The symposium report is right when it warns against pursuing prestige and rankings for their own sake. Broader priorities and a wider range of interests must be served, both in China and across the range of emerging markets.

Aspiring to be world class: The case of Australian universities. Jan Currie, Professor Emeritus, School of Education, Murdoch University, Western Australia. Thursday, September 27, 2012, 12noon--1:30pm, 768 Evans Hall (map).
Description: Aspiring to be “world class” universities, policy makers around the world have introduced research assessment exercises to help their universities gain higher rankings in world league tables. Australian policy makers have followed this global trend to try to increase their universities’ rankings in the top 100. This seminar looks at some of the strategies used to improve Australia’s research excellence and its international collaboration. It will discuss how globalization has altered the pace of these changes and caught academics in a complex interplay between global, national and local contexts, pushing and pulling them in different directions. As universities have become more integrated into the global knowledge economy, the working conditions of academics have altered substantially with greater competition and pressure to be more corporate, more accountable and more international. It discusses the changes that have occurred in Australia since the mid-1990s to reshape the higher education landscape and the impact it has had on academics’ working conditions.
Bio: Professor Emeritus Jan Currie (BA, Purdue, MA, UCLA, PhD, Chicago), School of Education, Murdoch University, Western Australia, has written extensively on the impact of globalization on universities (with Richard DeAngelis, Harry de Boer, Jeroen Huisman, and Claude Lacotte, Global Practices and University Responses, 2003; with Bev Thiele and Patricia Harris, Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers and Sacrifices, 2002; and co-edited with Janice Newson, Universities and Globalization, 1998) She has also written on academic freedom (with Carole Pedersen and Ka-ho Mok, Academic Freedom in Hong Kong, 2006); on academic work (with Lesley Vidovich, The Changing Nature of Academic Work, In M. Tight, K. H. Mok, J. Huisman and C. C. Morphew (Eds.) The Routledge International Handbook of Higher Education, 2009; and Globalization’s impact on the professoriate in Anglo-American universities, In A. Welch (Ed.) The Professors: Profile of a Profession, 2005); and on governance issues (with Lesley Vidovich, Governance networks: Interlocking directorships of corporate and non-profit boards, Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 2012; and Governance and trust in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 2011).

By Ray Clancy. International students studying in Australia are now better protected under the government’s Tuition Protection Service (TPS), according to the Minister for Tertiary Education, Chris Evans.
He said that the TPS would reform the sector by providing increased protection and ensuring international students continue to view Australia as a great place to study.
‘We want to ensure Australia remains a first class destination for international students to gain a quality education and a positive student experience,’ he said.
‘International education is a major industry for Australia, generating around $15.7 billion in 2011 and estimated to support around 125,000 jobs. The government’s new protection service is good news for education providers and good news for students,’ he added.
The TPS is a single mechanism to place students with alternative providers in the case of an education service closure, or, as a last resort, to provide refunds of unexpended course fees.
‘The enhanced TPS will strengthen what is already the world’s most rigorous protection scheme. It will deliver a timely service, more choice and control for students, one set of fees for providers and will ensure greater accountability for government,’ explained Evans.
The new director of the TPS is Vipan Mahajan who has a long career in the Australian Public Service, most recently in senior management in international education in the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.
The TPS is the final chapter in the government’s response to the Baird Review. The TPS Advisory Board will be appointed to develop recommendations on the risk levy to be paid by registered providers in 2013.

By Dan Harrison. University leader Fred Hilmer has declared Australian universities are on a precipice, underfunded and smothered by regulation, and heading for decline without urgent and dramatic policy change.
Addressing the National Press Club yesterday, Professor Hilmer, the vice-chancellor of the University of NSW, said universities should be free to set their own fees for Australian bachelor degrees. Currently, universities are free to set their prices for international students and for Australian students in postgraduate courses, but fee levels for local students in undergraduate courses are set by the Commonwealth.
Professor Hilmer - the chairman of the Group of Eight consortium of top research universities which includes the ANU - also flagged a more assertive approach to lobbying by the university sector, which he suggested had been too acquiescent in the face of bad policy.
''I think we've got to play in the public policy field a lot more aggressively than we have been,'' he said.
''We're getting close to a time when we've got to do pretty much what the mining industry did. Just say no, take out ads, and be absolutely vocal.''
''I don't think we use the strength of our reputations sufficiently, and I think we're going to have to, because we've got to get this environment changed.''
Professor Hilmer delivered a withering critique of the Gillard government's higher education policies, which he described as ''a mix of rose-coloured aspirations, oppressive regulation and Scrooge-like funding.''
He said about 20 of Australia's universities ranked in the global top 400, yet were treated ''as if they were fly-by-night ventures rather than respected colleagues of the best universities worldwide,'' forced to submit to a ''dysfunctional, smothering array of regulation.''
He said it had taken four months for the Gillard government's universities regulator to approve a new course UNSW wished to offer.
Previously, he said, such approvals took one week.
He said while Australian institutions ranked highly in international standings, these were based on past performance. ''If we look forward, the picture for Australian universities is not nearly as bright,'' he said. ''I think we are sitting on a precipice.''
He said allowing universities to set their own fees for bachelor degrees for Australian students would allow universities to lower staff-student ratios at little or no cost to the Commonwealth budget.
He said if UNSW was allowed to charge half of the students in courses such as law, business, engineering and medicine just 25 per cent more, this would raise $30 million a year which would allow the uni to employ 250 new staff. These degrees carried ''high private benefit'' to the students who completed them, and the HECS system would ameliorate the effects of higher fees on poorer students, he said.
A spokesman for the Tertiary Education Minister, Chris Evans, said the principles which guided the work of its universities regulator had been designed in close consultation with universities and with their strong support.

2020 wird fast jeder zweite Hochschulabsolvent aus Indien oder China stammen, schätzt die OECD. An der weltweiten Nachfrage nach Akademikern werde das aber nichts ändern. Vierzig Prozent aller Hochschulabsolventen werden im Jahr 2020 allein aus zwei Ländern kommen, nämlich aus China und Indien. Dennoch wird der globale Arbeitsmarkt für Akademiker dann noch nicht gesättigt sein.
Das geht aus Schätzungen der OECD hervor. Ursache sei die "bemerkenswerte Bildungsexpansion" in diesen und in anderen Schwellenländern, heißt es in dem Bericht "Education Indicators in Focus". In den vergangenen zehn Jahren habe China die Zahl seiner Absolventen verfünffacht, die Zahl der Hochschulen verdoppelt. Chinas Ziel sei es, bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts zwanzig Prozent der Chinesen zu einem Hochschulabschluss zu führen. Das wären 195 Millionen Absolventen und würde der Gesamtzahl von jungen Erwachsenen in den USA im Jahr 2020 entsprechen.
Hält der Trend an, hätten Argentinien, Brasilien, China, Indien, Indonesien, Russland, Saudi Arabien und Südafrika im Jahr 2020 zusammen 40 Prozent mehr Absolventen im Alter von 25 bis 34 als alle OECD-Mitgliedstaaten gemeinsam. Die Organisation geht von mehr als 200 Millionen Absolventen im Alter von 25 bis 34 Jahren im Jahr 2020 aus.
Noch im Jahr 2000 stellten die USA und China jeweils 17 Prozent der Absolventen in den OECD- und den G-20-Staaten. Im Jahr 2010 hatte China die USA überholt: 18 Prozent der Absolventen in diesen Ländern kamen aus China, aus den USA 14 Prozent. Die USA haben sich im Jahr 2009 das Ziel gesetzt, im Jahr 2020 den höchsten Anteil von Hochschulabsolventen weltweit zu stellen. Dazu müssten bis zum Ende des Jahrzehnts 60 Prozent der jungen Erwachsenen einen Hochschulabschluss erreichen.
Die OECD geht davon aus, dass der globale Arbeitsmarkt für Akademiker auch im Jahr 2020 noch nicht gesättigt sein wird, sollte sich der Wandel zur wissensbasierten Wirtschaft fortsetzen.

By David Jobbins. Four out of every 10 university graduates will come from just two countries – China and India – by 2020, according to a new report from the OECD. China alone will account for 29% of graduates aged 25-34, with the United States and Europe stagnating at just over a quarter.
The report says that if current trends continue, the number of 25- to 34-year-olds from Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and South Africa with a higher education degree will be almost 40% higher than the number from all OECD countries in 2020. The latest in the series of Education in Focus reports records that, in 2000, there were 51 million 25- to 34-year-olds with higher education degrees in OECD countries, and 39 million in non-OECD G20 countries.
One in every six 25- to 34-year-old with a higher education degree was from the United States, and a similar proportion was from China; 12% came from the Russian Federation and about 10% each were from Japan and India. By 2010, the same countries still possessed the largest shares of young people with a degree – but in a different order. According to OECD estimates, China accounted for 18%, followed by the US with 14%, the Russian Federation and India (each with 11%) and Japan with 7%. The OECD concedes that its projections may actually underestimate the future growth of the global talent pool, partly because a number of countries are pursuing initiatives to further drive up qualifications among their young people.
It cites the goal set in 2009 by the US to become the nation with the highest proportion of 25- to 34-year-old tertiary graduates – requiring the proportion of younger adults in the US with a degree to reach 60% by the end of the decade. It also acknowledges the progress made by European Union member states to increase the percentage of 30- to 34-year-olds completing higher education by at least 40% – Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK have already reached this goal for the 25- to 34-year-old population.
These ambitions are dwarfed by China, which aims for 20% of its citizens – or 195 million people – to have higher education degrees by 2020. If this goal is realised, the OECD says that China will have a population of tertiary graduates roughly equal in size to the entire projected population of 25- to 64-year-olds in the US in 2020.
And it predicts that the ceiling for jobs in science and technology has not been reached and that individuals from increasingly better-educated populations will continue to have good employment outcomes, as long as economies continue to become more knowledge based.
Voir aussi End of empire for Western universities, One third of young people with a tertiary degree from China by 2020.

By Karin Fischer, Denver—Is there a “China Conundrum” backlash? That was the headline of an article I wrote with my colleague, Tom Bartlett, published in The Chronicle and The New York Times. It told the story of the shortcuts and sometimes outright fraudulent behavior engaged in by Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and of how American colleges appeared too often to be in the dark about recruiting in that country. The phrase seems to have become shorthand for the confusion and anxiety over recruiting in China—indeed, a preconference session at the annual meeting here of the Overseas Association for College Admission Counseling even adopted the title.
But these last few days in Denver, I’ve noticed an undercurrent of admissions officers concerned that all the talk of unethical application practices in China has unfairly tarred the reputations of some very good students from that country who want to study in the United States.
“Can’t you write some positive stories?,” one admissions director at a prominent American university asked me. Another conference-goer, a college counselor in China, talked about the “stereotypes, some accurate, many not,” that exist about Chinese students seeking to study abroad.
Megan Wang, an associate director of admission at the University of Southern California, recruits heavily in China. “We have a load of applicants,” she says, “and, yes, there are bad apples. But we need to have a little more faith in these students.”
Ms. Wang says she is seeing a marked improvement in the quality of Chinese applications. Prospective students there know that some of their predecessors “did not represent them well,” she says, and a number of them are eager to change that perception. This year she received some applications from China with homemade pledges attached, attesting that the students had completed the paperwork themselves without the help of one of the many paid recruitment agents in that country.
Despite Ms. Wang’s optimism, one of the most heavily attended sessions during the conference, with participants sitting in the aisles of a small auditorium, was one entitled, “How to Make Confident Decisions About Chinese Applicants.” The conclusion seemed to be: Often, you can’t.
A speaker at that session, F. David McCauley, deputy director of college counseling at Beijing National Day School, told the group that many of American admissions officers’ fears about Chinese applicants are founded. Students sometimes skip classes for months at a time during their senior year to cram for exams, he says, even boarding at test-prep centers. Recently, he got a call from a top American university about a supposed student of his who had applied there. The student had never attended Beijing National Day School.
One of the newest strategies, Mr. McCauley says, is for students in Japan who have taken English-proficiency exams to call counterparts in China to fill them in on the test questions.
Of fraudulent practices, “what you hear about, you can believe,” Mr. McCauley says.
Marianne Brandt, Mr. McCauley’s counterpart at Shenzhen Middle School, a high school in southern China, said an American college had sent her a transcript from one of her students after it raised red flags. Fifty of 80 grades on the document had been faked by a recruitment agent hired by the student’s family. So, too, were the recommendation letters.
Another Chinese-based counselor told me that although one might think that mounting concern among American colleges would harm the reputation of agents, some agents were using it to their advantage. For example, one agent told parents that the suspicions of American colleges were precisely why they needed to hire him—he could guarantee that he could get students’ applications through admissions scrutiny.
Mr. McCauley has persuaded about a dozen high schools, mainly in Beijing, to agree to  abide by certain practices in college counseling to try to undercut the problematic activity, such as providing unaltered transcripts directly to overseas universities. But, he notes, few high schools have in-house guidance counselors, leaving many students to turn to outside agents. “We’ve got a broomstick,” he says, “to fight off an army of samurai.”

More than 70 per cent of universities nationwide are offering credits to students who participated in internship programs at companies, but only 2 per cent of students have actually acquired the credits, according to an annual survey by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
Many universities also have certified credits for volunteer and study abroad programs, and have otherwise made efforts to provide a variety of experiences to students.
According to the survey, 476 universities, or 74 per cent of the respondents, have certified credits for job experiences. About 90 per cent of national universities and 75 per cent of private universities granted such credits, while only 55 per cent of prefectural and municipal universities did so.
Large universities have been more willing to certify credits for such activities. Ninety-five per cent of universities with more than 5,000 students granted credits for job experiences, 73 per cent of them for studying abroad and 41 per cent for volunteer projects.
About 45,085 students, or 2 per cent, obtained job experience credits, while only 9,439 students obtained volunteer credits. In light of the obligation to foster vocational independence and to support areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, each university has encouraged students to participate in such activities. The survey results indicate many students are unaware of these goals and obligations. This fifth survey collected answers from 639 of 740 targeted universities, or 86 per cent, a record-high figure.